Forsaken (The Netherworlde Series)

by Sara Reinke

  Gabriel did indeed look unwell, and as he stepped into the room, into the light, it became more apparent. Haggard and pale, he looked exhausted and moved slowly, clearly in pain.

  “There’s no rest for the wicked, Marilyn,” he told her, still smiling.

  He was young enough and handsome enough that she was either appropriately distracted or charmed, or both. She giggled with all the same flustered giddiness as a girl a quarter of her age, then sank into her seat again.

  Extending his hand in invitation, Gabriel locked gazes with Jason. Though his outward expression remained friendly, there was something cool and stony in his eyes, again a cautious apprehension, as if he faced a dog that had a reputation for biting. “Please,” he said. “Follow me.”

  He led them along a narrow corridor past the foyer, then up a back staircase toward the rectory’s second floor. The wooden steps creaked and groaned beneath their feet, and Gabriel rested his weight heavily against the banister as he moved.

  “You’re hurt,” Sam said, offering a steadying hand.

  Jason moved with her to offer Gabriel support. “Sitri shot him—” he began.

  “Not here.” Gabriel waved them both away with a frown. He was definitely in pain, his face ashen, his forehead glistening with a thin sheen of perspiration.

  They followed the stairs all the way to the third story. As they walked down the hallway, Gabriel fished a key ring out of the hip pocket of his black slacks and murmured greetings to another priest who passed them with a curious and, in Mei’s case, suspicious glance.

  “Here.” Gabriel unlocked a door and pushed it open wide, directing them into a small apartment. The floor was polished hardwood, the walls whitewashed plaster. Tall windows let in a flood of sunlight. The furnishings were sparse and simple. In the living room, a burnt-orange couch circa the 1960s sat against one wall with a bookcase, TV stand and television set with rabbit-ear antennae across the way. A framed photograph of Pope Benedict adorned one wall; on another hung a wooden cross with a dried palm frond tucked beneath the figurine of the crucified Christ. Above the couch, oddly out of place, was a poster for the Al Pacino movie Scarface.

  “Nice digs,” Mei muttered.

  Gabriel closed and locked the door behind them. Then he reached beneath the flaps of his blazer and pulled out a pistol. There was an audible click as he thumbed off the safety, and when he leveled the muzzle of the gun directly at Jason’s nose, his index finger draped lightly against the trigger.

  “Oh, shit.” Mei shrank against Jason’s back.

  “Father Darrow, what are you doing?” Sam gasped.

  “Before you ask, yes, these bullets are marked.” Gabriel ignored Sam and spoke directly to Jason, his brows narrowed, and Jason didn’t have to ask what that meant. He knew. They’d been engraved with the triquetra mark. “And no, I have no problem dropping you right here, right now, in this room.”

  “I thought he was on our side,” Mei hissed.

  “So did I,” Jason hissed back, hands up, his eyes riveted on Gabriel and the gun.

  “Father, please,” Sam began, but when she stepped forward, Jason caught her arm to stop her. With a frown, she pulled away, then blinked at the priest, her expression hurt and confused. “We’re in trouble and need your help. Please.”

  Something in Gabriel softened at this, the harsh severity faltering in his face. The point of the gun wavered ever so slightly, but then his brows narrowed again and he steadied his aim, locking his sights on Jason.

  “Push your hair back,” he said. When Jason didn’t move at first, blinking at him in bewildered surprise, his frown deepened. “Off your brow. Push your hair back. Let me see your forehead.”

  Jason forked his fingers through his hair, shoving it back from his face. He watched as Gabriel’s gaze cut up to his forehead. The point of the gun wavered, then lowered.

  “It’s true,” he said quietly. He stepped toward Jason, the gun dangling at his side, and reached out, brushing his free hand against Jason’s brow. “I’ll be damned. You really are unmarked.”

  At this, his eyes rolled back in his head, his eyelids fluttering, and his legs folded beneath him. He crumpled in a dead swoon, and Jason yelped, grabbing for him, catching him clumsily before he crashed to the floor.

  ****

  “What’s wrong with him?” Mei asked as Jason lugged the priest clumsily to his bedroom and laid him back against his bed, a twin-size mattress on a plain metal frame. Like the living room, the bedroom was plainly decorated: a bed, a dormitory-sized refrigerator, a bookcase and microwave, plus a cluttered desk with gooseneck lamp. Above the bed hung a framed photograph of Paul Newman from the movie The Hustler, signed by the late actor: To Gabriel—Best wishes, Paul.

  “Sitri shot him yesterday,” he said, somewhat winded from the exertion of hauling Gabriel’s dead weight. “He used my gun. The bullets had the triquetra on them. If he’s like me, they could hurt him bad, kill him even.”

  He pushed back the lapels of Gabriel’s jacket and began to unbutton his shirt. Midway down Gabriel’s sternum, he saw a corner of white fabric and pulled his shirt loose from his pants. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered again, wide-eyed and aghast.

  “What?” Mei asked, leaning over his shoulder, and then she, too, saw the blood-soaked hand towel that had been folded and stuffed beneath Gabriel’s shirt. The priest had been shot in the groin, just above his belt line. The bullet wound, a ragged, red-rimmed, blood-crusted hole, looked nasty and painful. When Jason eased the towel aside to reveal it, Gabriel moved weakly, restlessly groaning in protest.

  “What can we do?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know.” Jason shook his head. “I think the bullet’s still in there. We need to get it out of him.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” Jason said again. He glanced over his shoulder. “Look over there by the refrigerator, you two. See if you see any utensils, knives or something.”

  “What?” Sam blinked at him, wide-eyed and stricken.

  “Are you crazy?” Mei exclaimed.

  “The bullet’s marked,” Jason said again. “If it stays in him, the wound won’t heal. He’ll die. But if I can get it out…”

  “Do you know how to do that?” Mei asked.

  He glanced at her, the look in his eyes apparently imparting volumes, because she drew back, ashen all over again. “We’re fucked,” she said.

  “No, we’re not.” He looked around again, then pointed. “Look, there’s a first aid kit out on the desk. Bring it over here. Hurry.”

  “You know, you have organs and shit in there,” Mei said as Sam hurried over to the nearby desk. “His spleen and all that.” When he didn’t listen to her, she grabbed him by the arm. “Jason,” she said sharply, firmly. “You can’t just cut into him with a steak knife and a couple of Band-Aids, for Christ’s sake! Who are you kidding?”

  Jason looked down at Gabriel. The priest was ashen, glossed with sweat now, his damp hair clinging to his forehead. Even unconscious, he trembled with pain, his breath escaping in short, hurting gasps.

  “We have to get him to the emergency room,” Mei whispered, touching Jason’s shoulder.

  “No,” Sam said softly, holding the first aid kit cradled in her arms. When Jason turned, she met his gaze solemnly. “We can bring the emergency room to him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Dean Abbott drew back the corner of a gauze pad Jason had loosely affixed atop Gabriel’s wound and sucked in a sharp, hissing breath through his teeth. He turned to Jason, his brows raised incredulously. “You shot a priest?”

  “No.” Jason shook his head, his eyes wide.

  “Don’t be an ass,” Sam said with a frown. “It wasn’t him.”

  The last person in the world he’d wanted to turn to for help had been Dean, but had seen little choice in the matter. Mei was right. He couldn’t very well carve the bullet out of Gabriel’s gut with a kitchen knife, but they couldn’t risk taking Gabriel to the hospital either. He
needed medical attention and Dean was the only person Jason could think of qualified in that department.

  And there was only one person who could have convinced Dean to come.

  “Can you help him?” Sam asked. She’d been the one to call him, the only person whose page Dean would have bothered to answer following his latest fifteen-hour overnight shift.

  “If we were standing around in the emergency room instead of the parish house, then maybe,” he said. “This is crazy, Sam. Please. I don’t know what he’s gotten you involved in…what he’s told you”—he spared a glower in Jason’s direction—“but this man needs a surgeon. Look at him, for Christ’s sake!” Dean reached for his cell phone, which he wore clipped to the waistband of his jeans. “I’m calling an ambulance. And the police.”

  “You can’t do that.” Sam caught him by the arm. “Please, Dean. I need you to trust me—to help me—on this. You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t something important, a matter of life and death.” She looked up at him, her brows lifted, pleading and unhappy. “Please.”

  For a long moment, Dean stood there, visibly torn with indecision. He glanced toward the bed, where Gabriel lay squirming restlessly, then at Jason and Mei, then finally back at Sam. Only when his eyes met hers did his severe expression soften, and at last, he sighed heavily and raked his fingers through his hair.

  “All right,” he said with a nod. “I’ll help.”

  Kneeling at the priest’s bedside, he opened his pack and slipped on a pair of vinyl gloves. “He’s lost a lot of blood,” he said as he gently examined the wound in Gabriel’s stomach. Even this light prodding was enough to make Gabriel twist against the mattress, moaning softly. “Grab that desk light over there, point it down this way, would you, Sam? Right over the bed.”

  Dean slipped a stethoscope about his neck, then wrapped the cuff of a blood pressure gauge around Gabriel’s arm. “His blood pressure is for shit,” he remarked after checking. “And his pulse is thready. He’s in shock, and if we do this, the pain could push him over the edge. He could die. We need to anesthetize him somehow.” He glanced around. “I don’t suppose he’s got any liquor?”

  “There’s some beer in the fridge,” Jason said as he checked.

  “Not strong enough.” Dean shook his head. “Go check his medicine cabinet. Maybe he’s got some Valium tucked away? A couple of Percocets?”

  “I have something,” Mei said quietly, drawing everyone’s attention. She reached into her jeans pocket, then pulled out her hand, unfolding her fingers to reveal a single crumpled paper packet against her palm.

  “What’s that?” Sam asked, puzzled, but Dean’s brows raised as realization dawned on him and he swung his shocked gaze to Jason.

  “She’s a junkie?” he exclaimed with an incredulous laugh. “Holy shit, this just keeps getting better and better.”

  “I’m not a junkie. Shut the fuck up,” Mei argued. “You said he should be knocked out. It doesn’t get much more knocked out than with a hit of smack.”

  Dean continued staring at them for a long, owlish moment, as if wondering what the fuck he’d let himself get sucked into, then turned back to the bed. “Come on,” he said irritably to Mei. “Hurry up before I change my mind.”

  ****

  “He was lucky,” Dean remarked when he was finished. “The bullet lodged in the retroperitoneum between his inferior vena cava and ascending colon. I was able to suture the damage to his small intestine, but ideally he needs to go in for a transfusion, plus antibiotics, a complete blood workup and a CAT scan. He should be catheterized, though I didn’t palpate any injury in the genitourinary tract region.”

  There was more, but he was mostly talking to himself as he tucked fresh warming pads and blankets over Gabriel’s arms and legs. “Plausible deniability,” he muttered, nodding. “That’s it. As far as anyone knows, I’ve been at home in my bed, sound asleep and…”

  “He’s freaking out,” Mei said quietly to Jason. She sat in a recliner, which she’d scooted near the window. She’d raised the lower sash and propped it open with a hardbound Bible so she could smoke a cigarette.

  “Yeah, I am,” Dean agreed, having overheard this. He glanced at them and laughed as he pulled a hooded sweatshirt on over his bloodstained sweater, one he’d grabbed out of Gabriel’s closet. “I’m the one facing who knows how many lawsuits here, not to mention criminal charges if the good Father here decides to kick the bucket.”

  “Dean…” Sam began, reaching for him.

  “I’m serious, Sam. They’ll revoke my license if they find out I was here. Which I wasn’t.” He marched across the room and snatched the cigarette out of Mei’s hand, taking a short, sharp drag. “You got that? I was never here.”

  He tucked the cigarette between his teeth and began stuffing supplies back into his duffel bag. “Never mind how I’d explain this to my dad,” he mumbled. “And if he dies…”

  “He’s not going to die,” Jason said. The bullet, bearing the unmistakable mark of the triquetra, now rested in a little blood smear against a folded washcloth that he held in his hand. He can heal now, he thought. It will take time, probably a long time, but he’ll recover now, just like I’m healing from Nemamiah’s stab wound. With the bullet gone, he’ll be okay.

  Dean shot him a withering glance. “Under ordinary circumstances, I’d be flattered by your confidence in my surgical skills,” he said. “But considering I just shot a priest up with heroin and performed an impromptu exploratory laparotomy here in the rectory at my own parish, you’ll excuse me if I don’t share your conviction.”

  He stood, shouldering the medical bag. “He needs antibiotics,” he said. “But there’s no way I’m writing out a prescription. You’ll have to come by the hospital to get them.”

  “I’ll go,” Sam said quietly.

  “No, I will,” Jason said.

  “No, I will,” Mei growled, stepping between them. “I’m the third wheel around here now. I should be the one to go.” To Dean, she added, “You can give me a ride, right?”

  “Yeah.” Dean rolled his eyes. “Great.”

  ****

  “Thanks, Dean,” Jason said in a soft voice, watching as Dean shrugged his way back into his coat. Moments earlier, Sam had walked with him into the living room, and from the doorway, Jason had watched them exchange a quiet conversation. It had ended with Sam rising onto her tiptoes, putting her arms around Dean’s neck. When he’d hugged her back, his expression had been pained.

  Dean glowered at him. “Don’t thank me. Don’t you dare thank me, you son of a bitch.”

  He started to walk past Jason, meaning to leave, but Jason caught him by the arm with a frown. “What’s your problem?”

  Dean arched his brow. “What?”

  “You heard me,” Jason said. “What did I ever do to you? Is it just about Sam? Or is it about getting even for punching you in the face? You picked that fight, man, not me, and I went to jail for it. I paid a fine, I paid all of your bills, to the point where I went damn near bankrupt. Isn’t that enough? Why do you hate me so much?”

  Dean blinked at Jason, red-faced and incredulous. “Because I don’t get what the fuck she sees in you. Well, no.” He uttered a bark of laughter. “I know what she sees in you, but that’s all there is. All you’ve got is your goddamn face.”

  His brows furrowed as he stepped toe to toe with Jason. “Do you know why I came out here tonight? Here’s a hint—it wasn’t to help out the guy who’s fucking my girlfriend behind my back.”

  Jason balled his hands into fists. “News flash, asshole. She was my girlfriend first.”

  “You died,” Dean seethed. “I was there. I saw it! You should be nothing to her now—you should have been nothing to her all along. You’re not good enough for Sam. You never have been. What were you going to offer her in that pissant dive you own? A lifetime supply of Bud Light on tap? Let her roll up her sleeves and use be the executive chef over your fry kitchen, plating up cheese fries and hot wings for the
rest of her life? Sam deserves better than that. She deserves better than you.”

  He jabbed the blade of his hand into Jason’s shoulder, knocking him back a stumbling step. “I came here tonight for Sam. Just like five years ago, when I tried to save your life after they wheeled you into my ER, when by rights I should I have let you die right there on my goddamn table. And don’t think I wasn’t tempted. But I didn’t—not because of you, because frankly, Sullivan, you’re so beneath me, you don’t even matter, but because I loved Sam. I still love her—more than you ever will.”

  He shoved past Jason, heading for the door. “Everything in my life is just about Sam, you stupid fuck. And it’s never made a difference.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “I told him it was over,” Sam said softly as, through the window, Jason watched Mei and Dean walk along the sidewalk below toward Dean’s car.

  “Be careful,” he’d told Mei moments earlier as they’d left.

  She’d smiled at him, but she was nervous and he knew it. The Eidolon inside him had been drawn to her anxiety, her tremulous fear. “You’re cute when you’re worried,” she’d said.

  He glanced at Sam now and found her gaze wistful and somewhat sad, her eyes glossy with a thin sheen of tears.

  “I can’t give him what he wants,” she said with a small shake of her head. “Not now. Not ever.” Turning to Jason, she managed a smile, even as a solitary tear stole past her lashes, trailing down her cheek. “Because my heart belongs to you.”

  Gabriel remained unconscious. His face was warm to the touch, but not feverish, and he didn’t outwardly appear to be in any kind of pain or distress. He slept deeply but apparently comfortably, and Jason had swung the lamp back from over the bed to the desk to keep the glare out of Gabriel’s face should he stir. The light spilled a narrow circumference of yellow glow against the desk beneath it. An opened laptop computer sat surrounded by papers, as if the young priest had been interrupted in the middle of working.